Touch physical connection is the ultimate acceptance of the rejected.

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Charla Conley
6 years ago
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1 1 Sermon Mark 1:40-45 Black History Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him The power of touch! Touch physical connection is the ultimate acceptance of the rejected. When I was in Kenya six years ago, I was taken by the hospital chaplain around the wards. After the tour, I realized that I had not seen any AIDS patients. I asked the chaplain about it and she was surprised that I might want to visit them but graciously took me to a ward separate from the rest of the hospital. Standing at the end of the ward she introduced me in Swahili. As I looked around I saw two rows of beds perhaps twenty in all. There were two to each bed topped and tailed of men and boys ranging from 7 to 70 in various stages of emaciation. The chaplain invited me to pray which I did. Afterwards I walked down each aisle greeting each patient with some shaking hands. Others were too sick to raise their hand but as I touched them, I saw a glimpse of life come into their dying eyes. It was an experience I will never forget. We walked away from the hospital in silence while I processed what I had just seen. Suddenly the chaplain burst out, You touched them! It was then that I knew why the eyes of the dying had suddenly come alive! It was at that moment that I realized the power of touch. They were the untouchables the lepers of the day in that country.

2 2 In India, more than 160 million people are called "Untouchables" Their only crime is to be born on the wrong side. They have been tainted by their birth into a caste system that deems them impure, less than human. Only recently we read in the paper of a man s family who were murdered in India because he chose to marry a woman outside of his caste. It is appropriate that, in celebrating Black History, we look at this Gospel reading from Mark of the healing of the leper the untouchable at the time of Jesus. In the days of slavery, it was the black slave who was deemed less than human. Even following emancipation things were slow to change. V.S Naipaul tells the story of a black man who opened a bakery in Trinidad. He baked the best bread in town but he couldn t let anyone know that he was the baker. He hired a man of Chinese descent as a front man to serve the customers because he was aware that no one would buy the bread if they saw him. It was contaminated because he had touched it. A descendant of a slave not so long ago told me blatantly that he had been in a restaurant where the waiter was obviously gay. He said with disdain that he could not eat the food that this waiter had touched and this was a loyal Anglican and a lay reader in the Church. Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him

3 3 In our litigious society we are taught to be careful of touch and in many cases rightly so. But we are also taught of the difference between a good touch and a bad one. We have often become somewhat paranoid about catching something about perceived bad touches leading to litigation. One writer calls touch the forgotten language of the church. And yet we cannot survive without it. Touch is considered one of the basics for survival. In a research done in 1915, 90% of deaths of babies under a year in one orphanage were due to inadequate sensory stimulation - touch Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him We all have our untouchables those who we look down on, or shun. They are legion. Retarded people physically disabled people obese people homeless people dirty people weird people... and that doesn't even address homosexual people or women who wear headscarves. We used to look down on divorcees in the church, until too many of us experienced the trauma of a broken marriage ourselves. We used to make lepers out of unwed mothers they would disappear for a while, go to live with an aunt somewhere. We still make lepers out of homeless people, addicted people, convicted people, people who don t speak English, or speak it with thick accents, Muslims and immigrants. We still make lepers out of welfare recipients and gay people. We draw boundaries between those who are acceptable and those who are not.

4 4 And yet most of us at one time has been rejected for who we are perceived to be and not who we really are. In reaching out and touching the leper, Jesus accepted him for who he was. Accepted him without reservation even considered him worthy of healing! Leprosy at the time of Jesus had the kind of symbolic dimension that AIDS has for many people today. Jesus broke down walls of alienation and centuries of prejudice by the simple but powerful gesture of reaching out and touching the body of the leper. It is important for us today to note that the healing power from Jesus went beyond curing broken bones and ailing bodies. Sickness and, therefore, healing is not simply a biological or physical phenomenon. It touches every level of our existence as a human being: physical, emotional, social, and spiritual. Jesus reaches out and touches that part of us that part of our society which names those who are the untouchables of the day. When Jesus healed the leper, he did not just heal the leper s body, he healed a social barrier. We must pray for that healing but, like the leper, we have to ask, If you choose and have confidence that he will say, I do choose. God has put us here to be his arms that reach out and to be his hands that make contact, and to be his voice saying, By this touch, be made clean.

5 5 We are called to reach out to and touch the untouchables of our day and say: Become fully human enter our community and come back to where you belong as one of us. Who knows, maybe we are the ones who will be healed healed from our fears, healed from our prejudices. Today, as we regain some of the rich history of our Black brothers and sisters, let us look into our hearts and identify who to us are the untouchables. Let us, in the name of Christ, reach out and touch them so that they might know the healing power of God. Amen.

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humility reverence confident trust in Jesus Three Miracles of Grace Sermon Series on The King and His Kingdom #5 Dr. Peter Barnes Frist Presbyterian Church Winston-Salem, NC October 8, 2017 (Mt. 8:1-17) Introduction. Have you ever been in a social